Saint of the Day, June 21

Saint Aloysius (1568–1591), eldest son of the Marquis of Castiglione, renounced his rank and inheritance to enter the Society of Jesus at seventeen, after a childhood of such spiritual seriousness that Carlo Borromeo had given him his first communion when he was twelve. Sent during his theology studies to nurse plague victims in the streets of Rome in 1591, he caught the disease from a stricken man he carried on his back to a hospital, and died at twenty-three. His tutor Robert Bellarmine, who heard his final confession, said simply, 'I have no doubt his soul went straight to heaven.' He is patron of Catholic youth.